Thursday, April 13, 2017

Wilmer
J. Leon, III. is a political scientist whose primary areas of
expertise are Black Politics American
Government, and Public Policy. Dr. Leon has a B.S. degree in Political
Science from Hampton Institute, and a Masters in Public
Administration and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Howard
University.

He
is a nationally-syndicated columnist and the host of SiriusXM
Satellite Radio's "Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon." He
is also a regular contributor to national and international
television news programs, newspapers and websites.

Kam
Williams: Hi,
Dr. Leon, thanks for the interview.

Wilmer
J. Leon:
Kam,
my pleasure. Thank you for your interest in my book “Politics
Another Perspective”. The struggle continues and we can only move
forward through fact based analysis and dialogue.

KW:
What interested you in publishing a collection of your Op-Eds?

WJL:
As
a political scientist, I was looking for a way to provide to the
general public clear analysis of some of the issues impacting the
country. I wanted it to be in a form that would be easy for readers
to access and digest. I’ve always received great feedback to my
Op-Eds. So, a collection of them seemed to be the natural answer or
solution.

KW:
Most of
the pieces were written during Barack Obama's tenure in the White
House. How would grade him as a president?

WJL:
Wow,
that’s a difficult question to answer. Usually we take some time
and allow the lens of history to provide some distance and space for
the analysis to be done. Right now, I would give President Obama a
"C.”

KW:
What
would you say is his legacy?

WJL:
Again,
that’s a difficult question to answer. Symbolically, being the
first African-America president is invaluable and powerful. The fact
that I can turn to my 15-year-old son and say, “You too can be
POTUS” is a very powerful reality. In terms of domestic policy,
navigating the country through the economic crisis was an incredible
accomplishment. Even though he bailed out the banks, he did nothing
for the homeowner. If he had forced the banks to lend the bailout
money back to the homeowner in the way of more favorable loans,
property values would have remained stable. The ACA [Affordable Care
Act] was a great accomplishment even though its rollout was an utter
failure. How can one pay so much attention to the detail of the
legislation and then ignore its implementation? This is
mind-boggling. He should have used the Recess Appointment option with
Merrick Garland. He should have nominated an African-American woman
to the Supreme Court instead of Kagan. In terms of education, he
continued the Bush Era neo-liberalization of education, No Child Left
Behind, with Race to the Top. From a foreign policy perspective, he
continued a lot of the Bush administration approaches, if not
policies. The assassination of Gaddafi was an utter failure. As a
Senator, he voted against the illegal invasion of Iraq and then does
a similar thing in Libya making the problems in the Middle East
worse. The use of drones was not as benign or sterile as he tried to
make them out to be. To a great degree, he did not use his bully
pulpit to rally his base against the obstructionist Congress. I don’t
believe that the politics he ran on were really his politics. I think
he’s a conservative corporatist who ran as a centrist. He tried to
be reasonable with a House and Senate that swore to oppose him at
every turn but thought that his intellect was more powerful than
their racism. Those are a few examples.

KW:
Do you
think African-Americans were rewarded fairly by the Obama
administration for being his most loyal constituency?

WJL:
Not
at all. Again, the symbolism is invaluable, but you can’t pay the
mortgage with symbolism. In his defense, the African-American
community, for the most part, did not challenge him and force him to
use his bully pulpit to address our issues. In that regard, we gave
him a pass. So many of us were so happy to have him there that we
focused on the politics of pigment and phenotype and forgot the
politics of policy. He rewarded other constituencies such as the
LGBTQ, Latino and women, but ran from us unless he was forced to
speak to us.

KW:
How do
you explain the Trump victory?Do you
think the Democratic Party made a mistake closing ranks behind
Hillary, especially after it was obvious that Bernie was the
candidate with all the enthusiastic popular support?

WJL:
There
are a lot of factors to the Trump victory. Dr. King called it “white
backlash” and Dr. Ronald Walters called it the politics of
resentment. A major part of this was the backlash to 8 years of an
African-American president. There are a lot of people who fear the
“browning of America” and the election of Obama validated those
fears. As Dr. Walters wrote in his book, "White Nationalism,
Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community":
“Within American society, which includes contending social groups,
there exists a balance of power that conforms to that society’s
racial composition.” This balance must conform to the normal
distribution of power, if society is to remain in equilibrium.
President Obama, in the minds of a lot of people became an indicator
that the normal distribution of power is askew and is in jeopardy.
According
to the Pew Research Center, 67% of non-college whites backed Trump,
compared with just 28% who supported Clinton, hence his statement “I
love the uneducated.” Trump won whites with a college degree 49% to
45%. The CBS Exit Poll data found that 54 per cent of white women
voted for Trump. Trump also won among white, non-college women 62 to
34 percent and white college-educated men, 54 to 39 percent. This
begs the question, for as nauseating as Hillary Clinton was to a lot
of people, how could white-women vote for a shallow misogynist who
called women pigs and said about Carly Fiorina "Look at that
face…Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that the face of
our next president?" And we know about his reference to women’s’
genitalia and he also objectifies his own daughter? In spite of this,
white women saw value and redeeming qualities in this guy. They voted
“white” before they voted “women.” A lot of working-class and
middle-class whites who have seen their wages and salaries remain
stagnant for 15 years were convinced that immigrants are stealing
their jobs and social programs for lazy “colored” people have
been draining the public coffers. Trump spoke directly to them and
was able to convince them that he would be their champion. They
wanted to believe him because he spoke to and validated their
bigotry. We can also explain the Trump victory by understanding voter
suppression and the Crosscheck Program. According to investigative
journalist Greg Palast, Kris Kobach’s Crosscheck “removed tens of
thousands of minority voters from the rolls in the swing states that
surprisingly shifted to Trump… Stopping Crosscheck is the Standing
Rock of racist vote suppression.” Yes, the Democratic Party made a
mistake closing ranks behind Hillary, especially after it was obvious
that Bernie was the candidate with all the enthusiastic popular
support? This demonstrates that the Democratic power structure is
closer to the ideology of the Republicans than the constituents they
are supposed to represent. The
way that the DNC mismanaged the nomination of Congressman Keith
Ellison to be the DNC chair is another example of this. They are not
nearly as “progressive” as they try to make themselves out to be.

KW:
The
country seems very divided by the election of Trump? Can that rift be
healed while he's in office?

WJL:
No, not as long as the racist reactionary forces such as the Tea
Party and Freedom Caucus continue to dominate. Also, neo-liberal
politics is killing America and it’s being sold wrapped in the
cloak of xenophobic, fearmongering, racist, reactionary politics. As
Lester Spence writes, “Racial politics perform work here, as white
attitudes about labor, work, crime and taxes are fused to attitudes
about black men and women and, through them, to other non-white
populations.” As Trump said, "When Mexico sends it people,
they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're
sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those
problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime.
They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." And on
March 12 of this year, Congressman Steven King (R-Iowa) said
“…culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore
our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” The next day, King
said, “Individuals will contribute differently, not equally, to
this civilization and society. Certain groups of people will do more
from a productive side than other groups of people will.”

KW:
Do you
think Trump is serious in terms of his plan to make Chicago's South
Side and other crime-ridden inner-city neighborhoods safe?

WJL:
No.
It’s a rhetoric to demonize a category of people and present a
narrative that will prepare Americans for the militarization of our
urban centers. The evidence is clear, safety comes from education,
jobs, and the hope for a profitable future. Investing in the
infrastructure of our inner cities and the people who live there is
how you make them safe.

KW:
What
about when it comes to jobs and education? He did make overtures to
the HBCUs.

WJL:
No,
he did not. That was hollow rhetoric followed by a photo op. Budgets
are numeric representations of priorities. When his budget was
presented the funding he had discussed vanished.

KW:
Is the
country post-racial? How will we know when it is?

WJL:
No.
As long as African-American men are incarcerated at a rate of more
than six times the rate of white men and the incarceration of black
women continues to grow at record numbers, America will not be
post-racial. As long as unemployment among African-Americans is more
than twice the rate of white Americans, and as long as studies show
that a black family's income is a little more than half that of a
similar white family's income, America will not be post-racial.
According to Forbes, “The typical black household now has just 6%
of the wealth of the typical white household; the typical Latino
household has just 8%, according to a recent study called The Racial
Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters, by Demos, a public policy
organization promoting democracy and equality, and the Institute on
Assets and Social Policy. In absolute terms, the median white
household had $111,146 in wealth holdings in 2011, compared to $7,113
for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Latino
household. [All figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of
Income and Program Participation.]” This is what is called the
"racial wealth gap.” And this is exacerbated by the problem
with inter-generational transference of wealth. White parents are
able to transfer assets to their children that African-American
families cannot. As long as African-Americans continue to deal with
"Driving While Black," extrajudicial police murders,
excessive high school dropout rates and imbalances in health care,
America will not be post racial.

KW:
AALBC.com
founder Troy Johnson asks: What was the last book you read?

WJL:
I
tend to read a few books at a time. Let me say, "Stamped From
the Beginning" by Ibram Kendi, "The Half Has Never Been
Told" by Edward Baptist; “Knocking the Hustle” by Lester K.
Spence, and “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison I’m always
re-reading the classics.

KW:
Ling-Ju Yen asks: What
is your earliest childhood memory?

WJL:
Wow!
Being driven to nursery school in Mrs. James’ white Corvair, with
her son Dennis and Kenny McGhee.

KW:
Who
loved you unconditionally during your formative years?

WJL:
My
parents until their deaths.

KW:
Was
there a meaningful spiritual component to your childhood?

WJL:Yes.
I was raised Catholic, sentenced as a child to do 1st to 12th grades
in Catholic school, and served all 12 years. As the only
African-American child in my class from grade 4 to 8, I was subjected
to a lot of racist abuse by classmates and teachers. The spiritual
element of my childhood came around the 6th
grade when I was taught that the Jesus of history was a Palestinian
Jew who looked more like me than my bigoted classmates and teachers,
and not like the White Jesus/God that they were indoctrinating me to
pray to.

KW:
What is your favorite dish to cook?

WJL:
Smoked
roast and/or shrimp or chicken etouffee’.

KW:
The
Morris Chestnut question: Was there any particular moment in your
childhood that inspired you to become the person you are today?

WJL:
Sorry,
but there are four. First, my mother ran the Head Start program in
our home town of Sacramento, California in the Sixties, and she would
take me with her in the summers to work with the kids. My dad was a
parole officer early in his career and would take me with him on some
of his visits with former parolees. My parents taught me that all
humans have value and the importance of working for the empowerment
of the community. Hearing Tom Porter’s voice on “Morning
Conversations with Tom Porter” on WPFW 89.3 FM in DC in 1983. His
perspective changed my world view. And seeing Dr. Ronald Walters with
Ted Koppel on “Nightline.” I knew then that my life’s work
would be as a political scientist and that Black Politics would be my
focus.

KW:
Sherry
Gillam would like to know what is the most important life lesson
you've learned so far?

WJL:
As
Sho Baraka says, “In the land of the passive, make sure that you
man up; when introduced to a lady it’s always proper to stand
up…always speak up for the weak until somebody listens…your knees
should be hurt from prayin’ with your people and your shirt should
be wet from cryin’ over evil.” Contrary to the popular narrative,
our struggle has always been about the success of the collective not
the individual.

KW:
When
you look in the mirror, what do you see?

WJL:
A
flawed man, husband and father trying mightily to measure up to the
standard set by his brilliant, loving and committed parents.

KW:
If you
could have one wish instantly granted, what would that be for?

WJL:
One
more conversation with my parents. I miss them.

KW:
Is there any question no one ever asks you, that you wish someone
would?

WJL:What
was it like growing up in an African American community in South
Sacramento as the son of Wilmer, Jr. and Edwina Leon? It was a
blessing. I was a midget in the land of giants. I grew up around an
eclectic group of educators, lawyers, physicians, Tuskegee Airman,
etcetera, who were all committed to excellence, our culture, the
community and raising their kids to be strong Race People who would
fight against the racism that we were subjected to during the Sixties
and Seventies.

KW:
Judyth
Piazza asks: What key quality do you believe all successful people
share?

WJL:Challenging
the status quo and using excellence to do so.

KW:
What advice do you have for anyone who wants to follow in your
footsteps?

WJL:
Don’t.
Learn from where I’ve gone; and lead, don’t follow.

KW:
The
Tavis Smiley question: How do you want to be remembered?

WJL:
As a
man who unconditionally loved his family and worked tirelessly to
make his community better. And as a man who left the situation a
little better than he found it.

KW:
Thanks
again for the time, Dr. Leon, and best of luck with the book.

WJL:
Thank
you for your interest, Kam, and for your assistance in promoting it.

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.